From a game theoretic/psychology perspective, doing this kind of thing makes sense. It punts the ball on so many issues, and gets people into the mindset that a

From a game theoretic/psychology perspective, doing this kind of thing makes sense. It punts the ball on so many issues, and gets people into the mindset that all of our problems will go away when the rewrite is "done." I wonder what analogs out of software engineering exist for this - probably a lot.